Guild Wars 2

Notably, at lower levels.

To get to 75 tailoring, you need to make and use several master insignias (or discover tons of combinations with rank 25 ones). That’s 8 fine materials per insignia. Plus 5 threads, which are 80c/10 (and get even more expensive as you rank up!).

Comparably, Jewelcrafting. Basically all finished products (anything needed to level rapidly) use… 1 fine mat each. The first 75 ranks are trivial (since copper is common). It slows down a bit once it starts using separate mats, but it’s still far easier to mine silver or gold nodes than it is to collect 8 vials of blood. And no vendor items at all. Plus kittenloads of discoveries (I think like 7/rank/jewel?).

Frankly, the results of tailoring and all are already nearly worthless (trading post price barely over NPC price at best, same for anything. Cooking is like 1c/each for almost all recipes), so it’s not going to hurt the economy any to make it less obscenely expensive to level armor and weapon disciplines (unless maybe you make all your money selling raw mats, but they have a way to cut the stocks down when needed)

seems like light / medium armor crafting skills is harder to level?

heavy armor, can mine ore from resource nodes.

medium, light armor, the materials can only salvage from drops.

deimos, yes and no on the heavy armor. you can mine the iron, for instance, but you can’t mine the ingredients required to make the insignias, such as blood, claws, poison sacs, etc ad nauseam.

crafting is very mats-intensive. it kills me; playing only one character, it’s impossible to gather enough mats to keep the character’s profession able to support her level. for instance, at level 30, a caster’s tailoring needs to be in the 125-175 range (not sure? someone correct me?). but by level 30, i’m barely making ends meet just in the cloth required, let’s not mention finding all the claws, scales, et al that i need to make the insignias.

i currently have … six? think it’s six … characters that i’m leveling simultaneously. the only one who’s crafting is equivalent to her level is my baby elementalist, and that’s because she’s the sixth — she’s able to utilize what the other five have left in the bank.

then, you also have the fact that mats, right now, cost far more than the items they make. this is normal, in a new game whose economy isn’t stable yet.

i know that in order to combat bots who farmed areas for items, anet decreased the drop rate of items supposedly after a specific amount of time — like, 20, 30 minutes. however, what’s really happened is that the drop rate has decreased from the get-go. for instance, there’s a river below divinity reach where i used to farm skale for blood; i could easily pick up 12-15 in about 30 minutes. now, i’m lucky if i get 1-3 in that time, it’s usually around 1. so i hang there for about 30 minutes, then i run to another area where there are bats, or harpies, and i farm there for about 30 minutes. now, keep in mind, one insignia requires eight of the bloods, or the claws, or whatever. that’s it. in order to level, i have to make one insignia per piece of armor i’m creating — so i have three insignias i’ve just learned, and six pieces of armor. that’s 48 bloods, 48 claws, 48 poison sacs i need just for that one level of discovery.

right now, it’s bloody frustrating. i don’t know what they’ll do, but i know that something, somewhere’s gotta give, or people are going to walk away from crafting.